Good Friday Jump School

My long weekend isn’t even over yet. I schooled Eli with my trainer on both Friday and Saturday, and this post is a little video from Friday. Over simple jumping exercises, Eli stays deceptively quiet. But string 3, 4, or more fences together he lights up (which you will see on Saturday’s video later this week). More than one person at the farm has commented lately that Eli looks like he wants to be a hunter. They see him calmly jumping one jump, or they see him flatting on the buckle, and I get where they are coming from. Believe me, I think it myself. HOWEVER. This horse’s leads are not 100% and neither is my attempt at training them so that alone is enough to keep him away from the hunter ring. He has a history of being apprehensive about the corners as a result of people trying to fix his leads and I have no desire to go back to that square one. Additionally, he wakes the eff up at shows because there is so much more going on around him, much of which spooks him once or twice before he gets over it (except the jumps, at least). And I’m not going to ride/longe him into the ground to create a hunter ride that isn’t really there. Thirdly, as I said earlier, put him to a course and by jump three his engine gets in a different gear. Most importantly, on top of all of this, he is my horse and his fate is in my hands, no one else’s. Therefore, we will at times awkwardly cruise around lower level jumper courses because that’s where we have the fun. Someone take my soap box away now. Here’s some video …

This is the second to last time through a simple exercise, and I think this is where we got Eli’s optimum jump…

The video was messaged to me via my trainer’s phone, and unfortunately that destroyed the quality, but you get the idea. I couldn’t be happier with Eli’s efforts of late. He is also back to eating almost normally so he is finally beefing out a bit more, shedding out properly, and dapples are starting to show. And, sure, if he gets a hunter brain in his head and starts swapping leads without issue, I’ll send him to the derby ring. But don’t hold your breath.

Ugh I hate how the video quality get’s massively deteriorated through text message. my best advice is to have them upload it to Google Drive and share it with you, then you can download it and upload it to Youtube.